Overall well hill they place AAF this machine is Fausset's is a real condition, a pathologic, sometimes disabling, chronic reaction to extraordinary physical or emotional trauma. There are traumas both sudden and ongoing that are severe that normal coping mechanisms are overwhelmed, leaving the victim chronically incapacitated. There are also victims whose coping skills and strengths are insufficient to deal with trauma that normal people are able to weather without lasting pathological effects. That having been said, PTSD is among the most abused concepts mental health law. Lawyers, the media, family and friends, sometimes expect trauma victims to take on undeserved sick role, occasionally even them erroneously as disabled. Plaintiffs' attorneys and family members encourage victims sometimes subtly to remain symptomatic order to collect compensation. All of these frequently delay the victim's emotional recovery, and sometimes prevent recovery altogether. Lawyers, and some plaintiffs, also know that PTSD is easy to fake. Malingering doesn't always occur, of course, but when it does, it's hard to detect. The PTSD symptoms and diagnostic criteria listed the American Psychiatric Association's are widely known and notoriously subjective. There are no reliable tests for PTSD. Psychological testing instruments that purport to reveal the presence or absence of the diagnosis are predicated on the patient's honesty, and on the premise that the person is seeking treatment, not compensation. Most are simply self-report checklists that easily guide any unscrupulous test-taker to create the result he or she wishes to convey. Sometimes symptom exaggeration isn't exactly malingering. Honest victims of trauma can be caught up what others want to hear, what they expect of a victim, or how a victim is supposed to feel. People who have been involved lawsuits for months or years often find it difficult to tell the lawyer or their families I feel a lot better now; maybe we shouldn't make such a big deal of this, especially when their lawyer has spent thousands of dollars on it. Cases are sometimes pursued beyond their logical end because I didn't want to disappoint lawyer A story, maybe apocryphal but several colleagues and I recall it as fact: Sometime during the 1980s, after the U.S. Veterans Administration declared PTSD a compensable disability, a veterans group the Pacific Northwest published a notice describing its symptoms and recommending that affected veterans go to the local VA medical center to be evaluated for monetary benefits. One of the symptoms mentioned was survivor's guilt, which a typographical error unhfortunately called survivor's You guessed it, several of the scores of veterans who showed up for evaluation brought quilts as proof of their PTSD. Suicide Risk Assessment Model Drs. Wortzel, Matarazzo, and Homaifar began a short series on suicide risk assessment the July, 2013, issue of the They refer to a survey indicating that some two-thirds of mental health professionals experience a patient client suicide at some point their careers. They speak of a balance between the general respect for patient autonomy that is a part of almost all clinical care and protecting at-risk patients from actions fueled by mental-illness-associated poor insight, judgement, and impulse control. The not that there is sometimes a tension between attention to acute risk and considering longer-term therapeutic objectives and chronic risk. The authors note that competent risk assessment is at the center of the care of the suicidal patient if you 't adequately assess the patient, you can't expect to recognize risk and risk level and that hospitalization is a necessary and appropriate part of managing the patient at high acute risk of suicide. They also reiterate the uselessness of contracting for safety when patient lives are on the line, and draw a distinction between contracting for safety and well-thought-out safety plans for patients who are at some increased risk but not